


When I Close My Eyes, You’re Here

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Gen, S03E16 spoilers, Seizure from sleep deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3592566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can’t really do anything while your world’s blowing up in your face. So you do a lot of nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Close My Eyes, You’re Here

**Author's Note:**

> No beta – mistakes are all mine. Many thanks to [](http://nieseryjna.livejournal.com/profile)[nieseryjna](http://nieseryjna.livejournal.com/) for cheering me on during the writing of this fic. Title is a lyric from The Road by Hurts.

  
Everything changes when your world changes. And every bit of that everything has consequences that aren’t easy to face.  


They say it’s change that makes your world blow up in your face. It’s actually the consequences, one dogging the other in a sadistic game of tag until all you can see is bright streaks of orange.

You can’t really do anything while your world’s blowing up in your face. So you do a lot of nothing at all.

A lot of nothing, unfortunately, implies not sleeping. More than that, it implies doing so much of nothing that you _can’t_ sleep.

  
-:-

  
Peter’s finger traces a line from New York to Paris. It’s one of the few possibilities not marked with an X. Yet.

If his finger takes a sharp detour to Reykjavik, Iceland en route to Paris, no one’s around to see it.

It’s been almost six weeks since Neal disappeared into the dust, since he _told_ Neal to disappear into the dust. He can’t blame Neal, because he hadn’t run away by choice. He can’t blame himself, because Kramer had Neal backed into a corner. He can’t blame Kramer either. It just isn’t satisfying enough.

So, instead of just staying up till insane hours of the night, then giving in to sleep, he sat down on a dining chair in front of a world map, searching for Neal as though he was an elusive blue spot somewhere on the paper itself. He hasn’t moved since El fell asleep. And he isn’t about to.

He’s still there, staring at the map, tracing lines and making alarming detours. In short, he’s doing a lot of nothing at all.

A door creaks open, then slams shut. Elizabeth walks out, wincing at the noise, running a hand through her tousled hair and scanning the room with barely open eyes. She stops when she sees Peter.

“You’re up early,” she says, hugging him and the chair. Peter raises a hand to her wrist and feels her pulse. She’s here. Neal isn’t. It should be so easy to prioritize. It isn’t.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he replies. He doesn’t bother with correcting her – he’s learned a thing or two from Neal. Afterwards, when (not if) Neal’s back and he’s charming his way in and out of various dilemmas, when he finally tells her about the true condition of his sleep cycle, she can’t say he lied to her.

If she looked him in the face, she’d see the raccoon eyes that hadn’t been quite so obvious the previous night, and there’d be no need to apply Neal’s evasive tactics. She’d know.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Peter says as he walks to the kitchen. He hopes Elizabeth won’t follow.

Elizabeth follows. She takes two long strides across the room and turns Peter around to face her. “Honey, what’s wrong?” She touches the bags under his eyes gently, as though it might cause him pain. “When was the last time you slept?”

She doesn’t say it like an accusation. Her voice is sympathy and understanding and Peter can’t remember a time he’s loved her more, though that might be because of the throbbing headache and the fever that accompanies it.

Elizabeth doesn’t get an answer to her question immediately. Not because Peter doesn’t know what to say, but because he can’t say it.

Every muscle in Peter’s body tenses, then spasms uncontrollably. He falls to the floor, shaking like a leaf on a willow tree that’s in the centre of a tornado.

Elizabeth screams, then drops to her knees and rolls Peter onto his side as gently and quickly as she can.

Medical dramas, while always an enormous waste of time, can sometimes be of use.

-:-

  
Peter is cold. So cold. There’s an opaque white mist hanging in the air, thick as freshly churned butter. It’s hard to breathe but there’s a single transparent beam in front of his nose that disappears almost immediately. It’s his breath, hanging in the air for the most fragile of instants before it’s gone again.

His eyelids are closed, but they shouldn’t be, because he can see the mist. It’s everywhere. It’s all-consuming. He wonders briefly if it’s consumed him too.

Through the mist, he’s almost sure he hears a voice. He can’t make out who it belongs to, but his head firmly links the voice to Neal. Neal’s the person he wants most right now. Elizabeth is right there, he knows, and she loves him far more than he’s ever deserved. But he also needs Neal.

He clears his frog filled throat and hoarsely whispers a feeble imitation of Neal’s name.

Through the mist, he hears something, many somethings. He can’t make out any of the words, but it is soothing.

He whispers again, clearer this time, “Neal”. The single syllable is loaded with childlike faith, a faith that can make even the hardest of hearts soften just enough to believe that fairies and goblins and all those mystical creatures of the night do exist.

On the other side of the mist, there is no one to help Elizabeth put together her shattered heart.

  
-:-

  
He opens his eyes and is almost positive he’s dreaming.

He’s in an airy hospital room like the ones you see on TV and Neal is leaning against the wall opposite him, hands jammed in his pockets, hat tilted to hide his eyes. Despite the hat, Peter can make out a scruffy beard softening the lines of Neal’s jaw.

“You’re back.”

“I’m here, not back.”

Neal’s right there, living, breathing and scheming. Of course he’s back. What does he mean by that?

“Just for the record, this doesn’t make you 3 and 0. I’m here of my own volition.”

Peter smiles his soft, crooked smile for the first time in days. “2 and 0,” he whispers.

“2 and 1. You didn’t catch me, so I win the point.” Peter doesn’t say anything, so Neal considers the battle won. He gives up his spot on the wall in favour of a low ottoman Peter hadn’t even noticed. “Please tell me you don’t need your hand held.”

“I don’t. Just – _please_ – talk. And stay.”

Peter’s throat and brain hurt too much from saying those short fragments of sentences to have any kind of conversation with Neal. He needs to hear the sound of his voice without having to enthral him with an art forgery case or disgust him with the likes of deviled ham and baseball.

And Neal talks. He talks about France, where he’d spent his time under the radar in tiny villages, blending in with the locals rather than the tourists. He talks about farming in France, about making goat cheese (fromage chèvre, as the locals call it) and the freshness of ‘fresh produce’ in France versus in the States. But more importantly, he talks.

Peter doesn’t hear any of the words. He just listens to Neal’s voice.

He wonders briefly where Elizabeth is, then decides she’ll be close by. She isn’t the kind to go on a whimsical jaunt to Paris at a whim, after all.

He can’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t be peaceful. He just knows that there is one. But he’s peaceful, and he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He can’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t want to sleep. He just knows that there is one. But that doesn’t stop him from drifting off.

  
-:-

  
This time, Elizabeth isn’t on the other side of the fevered haze. She’s asleep in the visitors area because it’s midnight and there’s absolutely no way they’re going to set up a bed for her next to a man who seized from sleep deprivation 18 hours ago and is currently running a 104 degree fever.

So what if the man’s her husband? So what if the pieces of her heart ache to give him what she can’t?

Even in her dreams, she curses sterile, feelingless hospitals (and lauds them for taking care of Peter).

  
-:-

  
The next time he wakes up, the sun’s streaming through an open window. The sun is far too bright and shiny for a day and a headache like this, he decides as he moves a hand to rest over his eyes. He isn’t in a room, but in a dormitory with five sick people (the sixth is perfectly fine, thank you). Neal is gone.

Nowhere to be seen. Out of sight. Disappeared into thin air. Vanished. Gone.

Elizabeth is there, on a rickety stool, asleep on his right arm, like he always knew she’d be. Her hair is an auburn mess beautifully backlit by the sun that’s killing his eyes and she’s _there_. Waiting for him, no questions asked.

Neal isn’t.

Even though it feels like a betrayal, even though it is so Neal to be there for a moment, then run and leave everyone hanging, he wants him here.

How had he been there in the first place?

He isn’t psychic; he couldn’t know that Peter had fallen ill. He’s on the other side of the world. There’s still a target on his back. And he _never_ listens without a few cursory words of protest. If Peter’d had even an ounce of functional grey matter, he would’ve known immediately that something was off.

Neal is still out there.

Peter doesn’t know whether to be happy or to tear his hair out in frustration.

Elizabeth lifts her head and cracks her eyes open.

“Hey,” Peter whispers.

“Hi,” she says, equally quiet. She passes a hand over his forehead, so brief he can barely feel it. “Fever’s down by a bit. They should let you come home now.”

There’s an impossible sadness in El’s eyes. Peter doesn’t like it at all. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Why didn’t you tell me how much you missed Neal?”

“I didn’t think it would make sense.” Even as he says it, he realizes it sounds like a pathetic excuse and El deserves more than that. She always has.

“Of course it makes sense.”

Neither of them needs to say anything else. Both of them know that Neal’s family now.

It suddenly occurs to Peter that the sadness in El’s eyes may be because she misses Neal too.

He’s determined to make it 3 and 0, just so that he doesn’t have to look into El’s eyes and look at a mellowed version of what must be in his.

  
-:-

  
Peter wakes up alone for the first time since he was in hospital. Elizabeth isn’t there. Neal isn’t either.

He’s had enough of the sharp-scented, impersonal air, so he decides to leave. He’s sure that Neal has gone back to June’s, but has no possible idea where Elizabeth could be.

There is no IV drip confining him to the room, so he begins a surprisingly steady walk to the nurses’ station.

  
-:-

  
Elizabeth returns an hour after Peter’s checked out. She’s rudely surprised by the empty bed.

A nurse who’s changing the linens informs her haughtily that yes, the previous patient has checked out. A more kindly soul at the nurses’ station informs her that her husband was muttering something about Neal not having the courtesy to stay till he was awake.

Elizabeth knows exactly where her husband is.

  
-:-

  
Peter is sitting backwards on a chair from Neal’s dining table, surrounded by dust sheets. His mind is far clearer than it has been for the past few days – the last of the fevered haze is gone. The sleep seems to have done him good.

Elizabeth would be back at the hospital about now. She’d said something about a major mess up with orders for a high profile client that Yvonne couldn’t handle by herself.

Neal would be somewhere in paradise. He hadn’t had the chance to say a word.

He turns over that last day in his mind, again and again. Through the clarity of a good sleep and the distance of a good number of weeks, he sees that E. Parker wasn’t on the background of things. Neal had trusted E. Parker enough to leave the Raphael with her. That meant E. Parker was close to Neal.

If he’d been sleeping alright, he would have seen it weeks ago.

The door to Neal’s studio quietly opens. Elizabeth walks in, pulls out a chair for herself and sits down next to Peter. She waits, staring at the dust sheets and wondering what Peter sees in them.

Peter leans his head on her shoulder.

“Figure out anything?” Elizabeth asks.

“I’ve got to start sleeping more.”

Elizabeth smiles. “Go to work. It’ll take your mind off things.”

Peter does what good husbands do best. He listens.


End file.
